Originally Posted by
rasheed
Actually, I believe Wal-Mart physical store receipts have been doing a flavor of this for over a year (transaction routing). I have only ever had an "E" for my Visa credit transactions, but I think it would be possible for other routings to happen. I think we agree that Wal-Mart would be one of the most aggressive and have an unlimited number of routings built into their systems if they can negotiate those individual bank network agreements. For me it is when not if for the merchants to get out of the "must accept" situations for those agreements to get done.
While Walmart has been doing debit routing for a while (hence the occasional complaint about "credit" transactions being treated otherwise by particular banks), I believe the "E" just means that the payment was processed electronically.
Also, it's probably a good idea to remind people that the "honor all cards" rule is still in effect. It's very possible some other alternative may end up happening instead, such as Visa/MC agreeing to reduce interchange for higher tier cards or imposing stricter rules on issuers as to when certain cards can be assigned to those higher tiers.
Originally Posted by
rasheed
The Kroger example is a good point. While they are only doing a smaller no-Visa credit test (which seems to have had minimal pushback - my guess is because debit is available if not another card type for a customer), they were supposed to have implemented Chase Pay (which hasn't happen). If they actually get that done now, then it would indicate they are not having success with renegotiating with Visa directly (since Chase is almost 100% Visa except for some co-branded card).
Kroger still has a few months to roll out Chase Pay based on
at least one article I've seen. On the other hand, retail tends to not bother with updates after around October or so due to the holiday shopping season.
Originally Posted by
rasheed
Yeah, I think the US market can go the EU route (not so good rewards cards with widespread lower discount rates for merchants) or merchants picking and choosing which cards to allow.
While I think interchange will end up being cut eventually, I'm not sure it'll ever be capped at EU levels--at least not without legislation.